lighting question.

[beefyberg]

hey i started a plant about a month ago, and i was wondering if i could switch the kind of light i used during the grow? any adivce would be great, thanks.

beefyberg Reviewed by beefyberg on 11-26-2010. lighting question. hey i started a plant about a month ago, and i was wondering if i could switch the kind of light i used during the grow? any adivce would be great, thanks. Rating: 5

[Dutch Pimp]

yes, you can switch

[Slevinkal]

he's completely right but what type of light are you switching from and to?

just curious...

[beefyberg]

right now i have flouresnt bulbs (80w) and i am switching to HID 150w

[Slevinkal]

KEWL

Thats great, just dont burn the little lady by putting that HID too close and you should be golden.

[beefyberg]

yeah i read that it should be anywhere from 12"-48" , just have to put your hand over the leaves and see if its hot. and another question how will i know when i need to fertilze? i used a miracle grow soil with a lot in it, nutrients that gradually comes out, over watering protection, etc...

[Slevinkal]

Hmm..

That is prob beyond my expertise. I actually started out with MG soil and quickly got away from it due to the info available here about much better soil options, that and that I found a local hydro shop with Fox Farms that was actually cheaper than the MG when I got it. Go figure...

What I would do today with MG pre-nuted soil? I'd flush the living hell outta it at least once before I added anything else in the first 6 weeks or so.

BTW there is a few around here that use MG soil and claim to have used it for years w/o any probs, maybe one of them might chime in with help.

Also, I have used MG for quite some time for veggies and houseplants. Never had too many probs but since I've started messing with cann I've even got away from MG all together. My wife's African Violets seems to do better in FF than MG but we aint talkin cannabis here either

[beefyberg]

what do you mean by flush?

[beefyberg]

and this is my first attempt, when should i bring the time down to 12/12? how long does flowering take?

[Slevinkal]

what do you mean by flush?

You need to run a lot of water through the soil to flush. 3x the amount of soil. So if you have a 1 gallon pot you would need to run 3 gallons of pH corrected water (no nutes) through the soil to literally flush out any nutes or other chems that are trapped in the soil.

This is usually done to flush out the bad stuff that fertilizers leave behind. Over time adding nutes will cause the soils pH to start changing and a good flush is done to nuetralize this prob.

If you wanna feed now you might run into probs. If that soil is pre-packed with nutes adding more may cause nute burn.

and this is my first attempt, when should i bring the time down to 12/12? how long does flowering take?

I cant give you an exact answer on this. Indica's finish flowering in less time than Sativas do. Do you know what you have?

When to flower is another thing though. You can basically force the plant to flower when ever you see fit to do so. Cannabis tends to double, if not triple in rare cases, in height while flowering. So if you want a four foot tall plant come harvest you'd wanna switch to 12/12 when the plants is around 20-24" tall.